Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Today
we'll be talking about leadership again. I hope that is a topic that
you don't mind learning more about. If you are interested in other
topics as well... at the end of this newsletter is a link to a SHORT
survey that will help me serve you better with upcoming newsletters. I
hope you'll take a few minutes to complete it.

Now, let's get back to leadership...

Leaders
(real leaders) have been studied for hundreds of years. Researchers
have studied attributes, characteristics, attitudes, behaviors,
personalities, intelligence, and values. What have we learned? That
every leader is unique and that the truly great leaders aren’t afraid of
being unique. We’ve also learned that while personality traits,
attitudes, behavior and intelligence patterns have been identified; the
key to great leadership can’t be defined by these things only.

The
key to great leadership is in your thinking, your mindset, your valuing
habits and most importantly - how you apply these things.

Great
leaders are maximizers and multipliers. Their thinking and valuing
habits reflect their perspective – not only on the job but how they live
their lives.

“Managers”,
while trying to maximize and multiply, often have mindsets that may
actually result in diminishing or minimizing. This doesn’t happen
intentionally but is usually a learned behavior or habit.

NOTE:
When I say “manager”, my intention is whose focus is on the tasks and
getting the work done. This isn’t your title but rather your role.
This isn’t who you are, but rather what you do. When I talk about a
“leader”, this person is focused on leading the people who are doing the
work. My hope is that you have both manager and leader
characteristics, but that you learn to focus more on the leadership
side.

Let me give you some examples of what I mean here.

Maximizers do more asking. Minimizers do more telling.

Great leaders believe in the people they are working with. Maximizers see intelligence as continually growing
and developing within their team. They assume people are smart and can
and will figure things out. They see their organization as full of
talented people who are capable of contributing at much higher levels.
Diminishers see intelligence as something basic about a person that
can’t change much. When this is the case, the Diminisher believes that
they have to tell their team what to do and how to do it. Do you find
yourself doing more asking or telling in your leadership roles?